


Sky Dancer

by FoxyMouse



Series: S.H.I.E.L.D. Interns [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gender Issues, Mutant, Mutant Hate, Mutant Rights, Sexism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxyMouse/pseuds/FoxyMouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aria is a dancer and a mutant. After some time spent training her skills in the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters she joins S.H.I.E.L.D. where she meets other people - some mutants, some not - and learns what it is to be a part of a team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Swan Lake

I was the prima ballerina of my class. I was the teacher’s prodigy. I was the favorite of all of the girls, and the favorite of the gymnastics class I took with a lot of these other girls. I was everyone’s favorite for the longest time.

I was the funny cheerful girl you could count on to be at your sleepover. The one you could share your secrets with. The one who would break into your mother’s make-up with you so that we could figure out how we would look in ballets we made up ourselves.

Most of it was real, but some of it was a facade. I was friends with these girls, but I was envious of their families. They had people there to support them. I was in gymnastics and ballet so that my parents could keep me out of the house. I was invested in my ballet and my gymnastics so that my mother could continue to sleep with our gardeners and neighbors without having to worry about my presence. I was sent off to ballet and gymnastic camps so that my father could have his secretary take pictures and videos of my performances and brag about them to his coworkers while he was busy working overtime so that he didn’t have to face the truth of my mother’s infidelity.

I knew all of this at the age of six. The very first time I caught my mother in the bedroom with someone other than my dad.

She bribed me with a new leotard, and begged for me to go play outside. At the age of six I now knew what sex was. Everything was now different in my life.

Suddenly my mom’s make-up was all so she could catch someone’s attention. Her clothes were all tools to lure someone to her bed.

The media only confirmed this. Every movie I watched showed me someone like my mom. It only served to once again confirm that I was valued for what I looked. My opinion, my brain, my personhood - none of that mattered. I was simply something for others to look at.

This took a heavy toll on my life. Suddenly ballet and gymnastics were nothing more than putting my body on display for others. I didn’t like this. I didn’t want people to look at me like they did my mother. I wanted people to ask me what I thought. I wanted people to ask me who I was; what I liked; what I wanted to do with my life.

I could no longer stand any questions about my ballet or gymnastics. I no longer went over to my friends’ houses. I could not stand to see them so in love with something that I felt had betrayed me. I took to spending time on my own wandering around the woods past my housing development until it was late enough that my mother’s guests would be gone.

These long walks ended up taking more and more of my time. I could hardly bring myself to go to school anymore. I still went to ballet and gymnastics - despite the feeling of degradation I got whenever I performed - because I really did like these sports. When I was dancing or tumbling with my headphones in the world seemed to disappear. None of my problems remained. It wasn’t until I opened my eyes and saw my blonde hair, hazel eyes, skintight leotard, and skin plastered in sweat that I wanted to hide my body. I wanted to hide from the mirrors covering the far wall. I wanted no one to see me.

It wasn’t until long after that that I developed my urban camouflage. I got the idea from some stupid mtv show - I can’t remember the name of it - where some girls were complaining about boys not noticing them because they looked “plain” or “normal”.

I was fit, and would continue to be that way - this was something I didn’t want to change. I knew that my body was one that boys were beginning to pay attention to; but they could only do that so long as I wore things where they could see my body through my clothes.

Suddenly my wardrobe changed. My clothes, while they fit me, no longer showed off my figure. My shoes changed into combat boots - nothing feminine in buckles and zippers compared to the heels and flats the other girls were wearing. I dyed my hair a dark brown so that I wasn’t given any attention based off of my blonde hair. I also cut it short, spiking it in a way so that you could still tell that I was a girl, but there was nothing classically feminine about me. There would be no assumptions made of me based off of my looks if I could help it. Baggy or band-related shirts. Cargo pants or looser jeans. Boots - never sneakers. Purses that looked more like messenger bags. 

With my transformation complete I could now blend into the hallways at school. High school was simple to get through up until the day we performed swan lake.

I was the lead - like always. It was the night of the performance and it was almost to the second act. I was in the middle of a solo, dancing towards the transformation sequence when I lost myself in the music. This hadn’t happened in years. The music taking over my senses, everything disappearing until there was nothing but my body moving, and the sense of moving along with the crescendos and the decrescendos… until there was no more music. 

I looked down at the pit to discover that I was no longer standing on the stage. Everyone was below me staring as I stood suspended above them all.

I screamed, and with that I toppled to the stage. I was unhurt, and mostly dazed. Other people were screaming, the other dancers weren’t coming near me, and all I could see was the camera of my father’s secretary pointed straight at me.

I ran. I ran until I could no longer breathe, until I was far away from the auditorium and hailed a cab. It didn’t matter that I was dressed for my performance, or that my combat boots were slung over my shoulder and smearing it with dirt. I had to get out of there. I had to leave, and I had to get to the only place that made sense anymore - and that was the woods.


	2. Indoctrination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aria learns how to control her powers, and moves on in her life beyond the original shock of being outed as a mutant.

I went home as soon as I could. What else was there for me to do? I knew I’d need clothes, and supplies if I were ever to survive after this. I knew I couldn’t go back to school, knew that I couldn’t face my parents. Going home wouldn’t pose any sort of a threat, because if my mom was not too occupied with whomever was in her bedroom that night then she would be occupied in someone else’s bedroom.

The door was unlocked when I got there, and there were some people inside talking to my mother. There was an older man dressed in a suit who was stuck in a wheelchair, a twenty- or thirty-something taller man with these weird red sunglasses, and a hairy gruff-looking man who was wider than he was tall. I’m not sure what made me stop instead of rushing straight to my room. Maybe it was my mother’s look of shock, or the way she glared at me. It could have even been the wizened and kindly look of the man in the wheelchair.

Whatever it was, I still wish to this day that I had gone straight to my room.

It only took my mother a few moments to cross the span of the living room and slap me. She was screaming at me, but my shock was so great that I couldn’t catch a single bit of what she was yelling. My mother raised her hand to slap me again, but it was caught by the shorter man who growled at her, “That’s no way to treat your kid, lady.” 

I ran to my room before they could see the tears that my mother- no, no longer my mother - that woman had shocked out of me. I was packing my things when I could hear a voice. “Aria, I know you’re upset, but running away is not the proper answer.”

“The hell it isn’t,” I muttered as I stripped out of my leotard and shoved myself into a pair of camo cargo pants.

“Please, Aria, my colleagues and I can offer you another option.” I stopped in the middle of shoving one of my feet into a combat boot when I realized the voice was not coming from the other side of my door, but was rather being spoken straight into my head. “Yes, Aria. I am telepathic. I am a mutant, the same as you.” The other shoe fell from my hand with a dull thump as I processed what I had just learned.

Mutants were all over the television these days. There were protests for a cure, and others screaming that mutants were the next stage of evolution. I had never paid it too much attention - outside of occasionally standing up for this one boy who had transferred out of my school a few months ago after his mutant abilities (something having to do with some sort of plasma, or goo) were discovered. And now I was, was a-

I quickly put on my other shoe and shoved a loose grey shirt over my head. With a duffel bag over my shoulder, and everything else shoved into my backpack and purse, I opened my door - not even bothering to stop its momentum until itcrackedagainst the wall.

Whatever my mother had been screaming stopped. I stomped out into the living room and looked the man in the wheelchair dead in the eyes. It took me a few more moments, but then I recognized him.

My voice was cautious as I asked, “…You’re Charles Xavier, aren’t you?”

His hands steepled in front of his face as he inclined his head towards me, “I am.”

Professor Xavier was nice enough to allow me a few more moments of thought before I continued. “You run that mutant school, right?” He nodded again. I glanced over at my m- that woman, to where she was crying, sitting at the dining room table as the man with the weird sunglasses bent over her a little, trying to whisper something comforting I was sure. After a few more seconds of introspection I asked him, “Are you taking new students?”

I could feel him smile at the same time that the hairy man next to him grunted, in approval I guessed, and Professor Xavier answered me, “Yes, Aria, we are always taking new students.”

I didn’t even look back at my mother as I walked out of the house, knowing that the others would soon follow behind me.

———————————————————————————————————————

Since I was already in tenth grade when I entered Xavier’s Institute for Gifted Youngsters it didn't take me too long to graduate. I made a few friends while I was there - like Shadowcat, Wolverine, Colossus, and Domino. It was ultimately my friendship with Domino that prompted me to leave the Institute. Almost everyone I knew at the school was becoming an X-men or part of the X-force, and I wasn't interested in any of it. Over the three years I was there (I stayed an extra year to work on AP classes, and to get better control of my air walking) I kept up my ballet and gymnastics. When Wolverine was actually at the school he would tutor me in kick-boxing and other forms of self-defense.

He told me that I had promise, and that I’d make a good X-man. Apparently my innate ability of blending in with others made it easy for me to go unnoticed in battle; as well as made it easy to follow orders. I trusted the X-men - most of them that is.

I didn’t trust Scott. I never had. Ever since he picked me up with Wolverine and Xavier at my house that night I had felt uneasy around him, as if something with him was inherently off. It was this feeling, and assurance from Domino that I would do well working with her and Cable that prompted me to leave.

Not long after that I got into some mercenary work. Since I wasn’t much one for violence I tended to help Cable and Domino on missions that required speed and stealth. Domino trained me on making costumes to blend even more into the background, and with the robotic-ally-enhanced boots Cable made me I was able to take to the skies faster than I had been before.

Up in the skies I was safe, I was above everyone and I could run, twist, curl, and jump away from anything that could hurt me. I’m not sure what it was that got S.H.I.E.L.D.’s attention, but it only took a few months of working as a mercenary for Agent Coulson to show up at my doorstep with a cup of coffee, a folder, and an invitation to protect my nation as well as avoid some of the messier jobs that Cable and Domino kept getting paid to do.

I like to think it was the Professor’s constant reminders that mutants needed to show themselves in a good light towards the rest of humanity that made me accept Coulson’s offer. I know that it was actually the anonymity of a uniform that prompted me to accept his offer. It was in the promise of a uniform, one that didn’t require me to always appear in the news like those of the X-men, and that would allow me to hide and to do good that made me become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are large time skips throughout this chapter. As of right now nothing else for this character has been written, but she does eventually meet Crystal (the protagonist of The Blood Witch series) working for S.H.I.E.L.D.


End file.
